---Ryan's closing statement was strong. Consider the line, "I'm asking for your vote." Bush used it in 2004. Kerry did not. Obama used it in 2008. McCain did not. That line tends to go over well. Everyone running for office should use it in their closing statements. Why it's not standard issue by now is beyond me.

When Ryan was pressed repeatedly on whether he could promise Romney wouldn't raise taxes on middle class, Ryan refused to answer. Why do Romney/Ryan want to cut taxes on the rich and RAISE taxes on the middle class?

Sounds like nobody expected Joe to blow the guy out of the water, he didn't, but Dems could have been really hurt if Joe bombed, he didn't, and in the meantime, Lyin' Ryan was Lyin' Ryan again and that doesn't seem to hurt him with his own supports or the undecided middle.

"Fox News didn't know. They were just more willing to make an assumption that fit their preferred narrative. That's reckless luck, not intelligence."

How is it that the president of Libya also knew it? Reckless luck? More likely it was the Obama Administration shaping a false, self-serving narrative (with their toadies in the mainstream press providing support).

What criteria is used to select the moderators? Whatever it is they need to junk it. Martha Raddatz was God awful. Biden did a good Gore imitation with his sighs , smirks and interruptions. Thought the format stunk. Do a subject stay with it and end it. Why circle back to it? Debate was a draw. It's a V.P. debate. If the Dems want to crow about Biden out shinning Obama that's fine with me.

Still trying to down play a major international scandal GOJ'l ? How long before Rice resigns? Quote of the day:

The former regional security officer in Libya, Eric Nordstrom, recalled talking to a regional director and asking for twelve security agents.

“His response to that was, ‘You are asking for the sun, moon and the stars.’ And my response to him – his name was Jim – ‘Jim, you know what makes most frustrating about this assignment? It is not the hardships, it is not the gunfire, it is not the threats. It is dealing and fighting against the people, programs and personnel who are supposed to be supporting me. And I added (sic) it by saying, ‘For me the Taliban is on the inside of the building.’”

Four dead Americans and this is our government at work. keep on spinning GJO'L.

Congratulations, Congressman Ryan. Showing up for a debate that ill-prepared actually managed to make the disastrous appearance by Governor Palin in 2008 actually look better. You showed up for a VP debate and tried to bluster your way through with pablum and non-specifics and ran into a Vice President who wasn't going to let you get away with any of that if he could. Good job by the Vice President in firing up the base tonight.

(Gotta love that CNN post-debate poll; the vast majority by landlines and a 1/3 of the respondents as self-described "independents." So, weighted toward Republicans and libertarians.)

Biden reminded me of a character Chevy Chase used to play in the early days of SNL. He was a news anchor who would interview people and he would make faces at them when they were not looking . Does anybody remember that?

Ryan didn't hit a home run, I would have liked to have seen him push back against Biden a bit more aggressively, but he hit a stand up double. He came off as informed, dignified, and he presented his case effectively. Biden shot himself in the foot by being over aggressive, interrupting, smirking, giggling, etc. That schtick might play to his base, but I doubt undecided voters will respond well to it.

Ryan reiterated that his ticket doesn't have an economic plan. What they have is a couple of conservative applause lines: "We're going to cut taxes. "We're going to get rid of Obamacare." The rest of their plan is to punt it over to Congress. They don't want to take the chance of alienating anybody by being specific on any of the hard choices that will have to be made.

To paraphrase Scott Adams: Until you have some details, you don't have a plan, you have a philosophy.

Biden calmed his base, Ryan reassured his, independents and moderates won't have substantive complaints but Biden's antics won't play well. Will the GOP get any mileage out of what Biden did? They would be dumb not to play it up but the real action is in the next two debates. Slight advantage to Ryan.

I thought Biden behaved boorishly. In the beginning, especially, that smile was downright creepy -- though I'm sure he'd been told he couldn't look disengaged, as Obama had. I thought Martha Raddatz did a horrible job in terms of stopping the interruptions (and doing interrupting herself), at least in the portions I saw. (I missed a whole chunk of the middle.)

And any discussion of the debate simply must include Biden's out and out falsehoods on Libya. Good grief, there was testimony a day before about how the consulate and the people there WANTED more security, there have been reports ad nauseum that the WH knew within 24 hours it was a terrorist attack and Biden ... lied. If he didn't lie and is that misinformed, well, then he doesn't deserve to be VP.

Perhaps Romney & Ryan have a record of reaching across the aisle, but so did Obama (who worked with, among others, Richard Lugar on the Russian nuclear situation - legislation they co-sponsred), until the current Republicans, whose idea of compromise is "the Democrats come over to our way of thinking", or, no compromise at all. When the leader of the Senate Repubs (or was it the House) states that their one main goal is to make Obama a one-term president, how the heck can you think that they would work with the Dems at all? The Party of "NO", remember? Oh yeah, and who, while on the committee to work on deficit reduction, convinced other Repubs to vote "no" on Simpson-Bowles, so it never made it out of that committee to be voted on by the whole Congress? None other than Paul Ryan! Yep, great compromiser there (oh, and he did try to blame Obama for not getting it passed out of committee).

Biden's worst moment of visible contemptuousness: "Oh, now you're Jack Kennedy." Ryan never claimed to be Kennedy. Biden asked for proof that a tax cut would work and if it had been tried and been successful in the past. Ryan had said 6 studies say it will work and Reagan and Kennedy tried this and it worked. Biden can attack that those past tax cuts didn't work if he had evidence that it didnt' work. That would be the right thing to debate. But don't ask Ryan for proof and then accuse of thinking that he's Jack Kennedy.

Biden's experience, particularly in foreign policy should make him a better Vice President, but his inability to put a filter on his mouth and body language, plus the who Benghazi killing and how it was handled and talked about is not good.

"Monahan you are spinning like a dradle. It is you and your ilk who want to make a political football out of the deaths of four Americans."

Get real. This kind of thing inevitably winds up being a political issue.

Several years ago, as you may recall, there was a terrorist attack in Spain. The government of Jose Maria Aznar claimed that it was the work of Basque separatists but it turned out to be an al-Qaeda attack. The resulting scandal brought down the (conservative) Aznar government. I do not recall many liberals back then saying that it was not a legitimate issue.

@LizH... I would have like to hear Biden say that, instead of accusing Ryan of thinking he's Jack Kennedy. That's my point. Attack the data, the source, the outcome, but not the person himself, especially on something he didn't say.

@JerryB... I am all over the place, depending on the issue, so I suppose it ends up placing me in the middle. I tend to vote R, but I never vote straight R for any election.

Oh, regarding Romney's "bipartisanship": Ryan claims Romney frequently reached across the aisle to Democrats as governor. Not really, says the New York Times: “But on closer examination, the record as governor he alluded to looks considerably less burnished than Mr. Romney suggested. Bipartisanship was in short supply; Statehouse Democrats complained he variously ignored, insulted or opposed them, with intermittent charm offensives. He vetoed scores of legislative initiatives and excised budget line items a remarkable 844 times, according to the nonpartisan research group Factcheck.org. Lawmakers reciprocated by quickly overriding the vast bulk of them.”

One thing Biden does better than most politicians is making talking points sound less like talking points. Based on foreign policy and cornering Ryan a couple times, I give him the edge in this debate.

Re: details of the Romney/Ryan tax plan, a better answer might be:

"President Obama ran a very vague campaign in '08, it was based on 'Hope and Change'. He gave a general idea for a healthcare plan in the primaries, changed it again for the general election, and then once elected, handed it over to Congress to write. We’re not going to tell you one thing before the election, just to have it change in negotiations after the election. We’ve provided our framework for a job creating tax plan, and there's enough detail there to distinguish ourselves from the current administration for any voter to make a decision on this issue. For most voters, this means a 20% decrease in taxes. For the wealthiest, it’s a 20% decrease off the top, but some deductions are going away.”

JerryB, I'm not sure what you mean? If you mean that RomneyCare was a bi-partisan issue, maybe so, but I don't think I even mentioned that in my comments, nor was it mentioned in the quote from the NYT.

"I have a serious question for a Jewish gentleman. Are there uniform English spellings for Yiddish and Hebrew words?"

I'm a Jewish Gentleman so I'll field this. Mostly, yes, but there are often a couple of uniform spellings: Chanukah/Hanukkah, Rosh Hashanah/Rosh Hashana, Sukkot/Sukkoth. A lot of them like Yom Kippur only have one spelling. Dreidel is only spelled that way, but I'm just pleased when a non-Jew knows what it is and I commend GJO'L for the metaphor.

V.P. Biden came out like he had to after the Prez's lackluster performance. It's low risk backlash for "Uncle Joe" going a little ballistic. It's almost expected. But the POTUS couldn't get away with a too aggressive posture. I thought both men held their own. But in my view, the edge goes to Biden.

I misspelled dreidle, how embarrassing. I am a worse Jew than I am a Catholic.

But I'm right about the natterers overblowing the issue of the administration's failures with Libya security and their eagerness to minimize the event in the days immediately after it occurred. The adminstration has since acknowledged the nature and seriousness of the event so this is just not the issue you want to make it to be. You're just looking for an issue, any issue you can, to tear down the presidency, and I just think it will be a much bigger event when certain of these people go bye-bye, either before or after the election, in the sound and fury of a drone attack or an F-16 or whatever it is. The American people want justice and some of us want blood, and I think we will have it.

We should be unafraid to use drones or F-16s or Seals against any enemy at any time anywhere, and all indications are we haven't been afraid to do that, even on foreign soil and against U.S. citizens. You don't want to talk about that policy or it's effectiveness, because you'd rather harp on the Benghazi situation, but overall you are sleeping safer in your beds because of this president's resolve. Deny it all you want.

Osama won't be planning any attacks against you soon. Nor will Al-Awlaki. Nor will terrorist nabbed under GWB. The big picture is a lot more important than the small one you want to look at.

@GOL'J I have simply pointed out the lies and deception this administration has engaged in to explain what everyone knew was a terrorist attack. Biden lied about it again last night directly contradicting testimony given at the congressional hearing. You on the other hand continue to believe the likes of Susan Cutter and the "paper of record" which was taken to task by its public editor for burying the hearings on page three. Dean Baquet, managing editor, who oversees the paper’s afternoon editorial meeting, told Sullivan he “didn’t think there was anything significantly new in it.” Meanwhile the Post and the WSJ (that's the Wall Street Journal) have it the on front page. I don't know who my ilk is but it appears I'm in good company. Meanwhile you and the administration and the "Times" are trapped in a tar pit of deception, changing stories, and gross negligence, explained away by inept spokespeople like Susan Cutter and Jay Carney. Good luck.

But the President called it terrorism the very next day: " Obama used the word “terrorism” to describe the killing of Americans the very next day at the Rose Garden. “No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation, alter that character, or eclipse the light of the values that we stand for,” Obama said in a Rose Garden statement on September 12."

It appears from your last post that you are not Jewish. Neither am I. Thus it is not appropriate for us to make Yiddish the language of “insult.” You could have said “spinning like a top.” Please forgive me for this reprove.

That said -- I will continue to use the words “shtick” and “schmooze” since these are just perfect terms with no close substitutes.

How many times did Ryan start with ""let me tell you a story"? Yes, a fairy tale Congressman Ryan, a fairy tale. And why were you too afraid to have the moderator call you a "Congressman", demanding that you be called "Mister"? Too ashamed of the job you've held for the last 14 years?

How great was it when Biden said: "Read the letters Ryan sent me asking for stimulus for jobs and the economy"? Ryan and his "let's cut government spending" and his "government doesn't create jobs" meme crashed and burned on that one!!!

LIZH Well which was it, a pre-planned act of terrorism executed military style, or a spontaneous demonstration that got out of hand over a video defaming the "Prophet Mohammed. Either Susan Rice on the Sunday talk shows , The President at the UN or at any other number of occaisions blamed the video,The President of Libya and the President's own counter-terrorist expert called it planned act of terrorism. Someone is wrong. Tell me where was the security to begin with? GOL'j? BC? LIZH?

Richard, you are not paying attention -- I've said a bunch of times that I predict the investigation will confirm that it was pre-planned terrorism and that security was inadequate, a failure. This is an administration that will admit its mistakes, learn from them, and move on, and I can't wait for the next move because I think it will be a doozy.

@BC: Tell me BC did these attacks under Bush were these all terrorist attacks? Did the administration lie about the cause? In any of these attacks was the ambassador assassinated and dragged out into the street? Had the Embassies involved pleaded for more security prior to the attacks and told no? Could you list the attacks because I found 9, one with no citation so that's 8.So that's 8 in 8 years and no ambassadors killed. For Obama I tally 6 in 2 years and the first ambassador killed in 33 years.

2011 United States Damascus, Syria 2011 Syrian uprising
2011 United States Kabul, Afghanistan 2011 Kabul Attacks]
2011 United States Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina
2012 United States Cairo, Egypt 2012 attack on the American Embassy in Egypt
2012 United States Benghazi, Libya 2012 attack on the American Consulate in Libya
2012 United States Sanaa, Yemen

Yeah, right. This is also an administration that has called for "civility" in political discourse. It amuses me how liberals excuse the remarkably rude and uncivil performance of Joe Biden. Liberals have actually said in the past that incivility in political discourse can lead to violence. I wonder (sarcastically) how many people will be killed as the result of Joe Biden's incivility.

(I'll give you that House Republicans voted against it, but they had a hand in crafting it with their objections, some of which were conceded to.)

I'm loving this morning, with people calling The Vice President's dismissal of Congressman Ryan's constant lying last night as being "rude" rather than admitting that Ryan was lying (well, except for when he admitted his desire to impose his religious beliefs on women towards the end).

Well, how about this? This has to do with testimony from the investigation into the raid that is being held now: "Counter to Ryan’s claims, the main focus of the requests were for the U.S. Embassy located in the Libyan capital, Tripoli, opposed to the outpost in Benghazi, Foreign Policy reports:

At Thursday night’s debate, Rep. Paul Ryan seemed to suggest that the requests were for Marines to go to Libya, which was not the case. The requests were to extend the tours of a Mobile Security Detachments [MSD] and the Site Security Team [SST] at the U.S. embassy in Tripoli, which are teams of military personnel, not Marines, who can help protect an embassy and its personnel.

“What we should not be doing is rejecting claims for calls for more security in our barracks, in our Marine — we need Marines in Benghazi when the commander on the ground says we need more forces for security,” Ryan said. “There were requests for extra security. Those requests were not honored.”

Ryan also asked why the Ambassador in Paris receives a Marine detachment as part of his security, but the same level of protection was not afforded to Ambassador Chris Stevens, who was killed in the September assault in Benghazi. However, according the Marine Corps Embassy Security Group’s website, the primary mission of deployed Marines is not personal security, but rather “to prevent the compromise of classified material vital to the national security of the United States.”

I read this yesterday (please noted that while the first cuts are for FY 2013, which has just started, there are others noted for the past 2 fiscal years:

Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) said today that he voted to cut funding for U.S. embassy security amid political attacks from Republicans that the Obama administration did not do enough to secure the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya that was attacked last month.

Republicans and their allies have been trying to politicize the attack — which killed four Americans, including the U.S. Ambassador to Libya — suggesting, without evidence, the Obama administration may have ignored intelligence that the attack was imminent, didn’t properly secure the Benghazi compound and is now trying to cover it up.

But hidden beneath the GOP campaign is the fact that House Republicans voted to cut nearly $300 million from the U.S. embassy security budget. When asked if he voted to cut the funds this morning on CNN, Chaffetz said, “Absolutely“:

O’BRIEN: Is it true that you voted to cut the funding for embassy security?

CHAFFETZ: Absolutely. Look, we have to make priorities and choices in this country. We have — think about this — 15,000 contractors in Iraq. We have more than 6,000 contractors, private army there for President Obama in Baghdad.

And we’re talking about can we get two dozen or so people into Libya to help protect our forces? When you’re in tough economic times, you have to make difficult choices how to prioritize this.

For fiscal 2013, the GOP-controlled House proposed spending $1.934 billion for the State Department’s Worldwide Security Protection program — well below the $2.15 billion requested by the Obama administration. House Republicans cut the administration’s request for embassy security funding by $128 million in fiscal 2011 and $331 million in fiscal 2012. (Negotiations with the Democrat-controlled Senate restored about $88 million of the administration’s request.) Last year, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned that Republicans’ proposed cuts to her department would be “detrimental to America’s national security” — a charge Republicans rejected.

[GOP vice presidential nominee Paul] Ryan, [Rep. Darrell] Issa and other House Republicans voted for an amendment in 2009 to cut $1.2 billion from State operations, including funds for 300 more diplomatic security positions. Under Ryan’s budget, non-defense discretionary spending, which includes State Department funding, would be slashed nearly 20 percent in 2014, which would translate to more than $400 million in additional cuts to embassy security.

And this from Factcheck.org: "Biden also claimed that the administration wasn’t aware of security concerns among U.S. officials in Libya before the attack on the consulate in Benghazi that killed four Americans. The vice president said: “[W]e weren’t told they wanted more security there. We did not know they wanted more security again.”

We can’t say whether requests for more security — which were denied — reached the top. But American officials who worked in Libya over the summer placed the blame on a deputy assistant secretary of state — not top administration officials — when testifying before Congress this week.

Eric Nordstrom, the top regional security officer in Libya over the summer, said: “All of us at post were in sync that we wanted these resources.”

Andrew Wood, a Utah National Guardsman who was leading a security team, testified: ”We felt great frustration that those requests were ignored or just never met.”

They placed the blame squarely on Charlene Lamb, deputy assistant secretary of state for international programs, according to Foreign Policy magazine."

So it is entirely possible that the Pres & VP really didn't know about these requests, if they stopped at the deputy asst secy.

Jimmy, come on, he didn't call for anyone to be assassinated and didn't say anyone should go down shooting. He was just smirking and rude at times. I didn't like it, but it wasn't bad as saying there was a 10% employment rate "all over America" when the rate is down "all over America." I don't think it's as bad as lying like that. Lying like a rug. Lying like Ryan. Like Lyin' Ryan.

I'm not sure what "liberals" think but your painting everyone with the same broad brush is getting old. I did it earlier today to Richard and was wrong -- you should admit your mistakes, too.

Come on, you're man enough, aren't you? You sure do make a lot of them here.

About "Change of Subject."

"Change of Subject" by Chicago Tribune op-ed columnist Eric Zorn contains observations, reports, tips, referrals and tirades, though not necessarily in that order. Links will tend to expire, so seize the day. For an archive of Zorn's latest Tribune columns click here. An explanation of the title of this blog is here. If you have other questions, suggestions or comments, send e-mail to ericzorn at gmail.com.
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Contributing editor Jessica Reynolds is a 2012 graduate of Loyola University Chicago and is the coordinator of the Tribune's editorial board. She can be reached at jreynolds at tribune.com.